PositivePortland ReviewSchweblin uses the conflict between the cutesy covering of the kentuki and the nasty actions of which they are capable as an allegory for real-world technologies, speaking to the way such invasions of privacy are packaged as benevolent additions to our lives ... There’s a subtle absurdity to the various narratives, an ironic playfulness that allows Schweblin to craft predictably calamitous scenarios with a humorous air. But for all of its invention, the concept of Little Eyes feels strangely ordinary. The kentuki is less a near-future advancement than a nostalgically primitive throwback ... Schweblin’s narrative is not so much an exaggerated dystopia a la Black Mirror, but rather a refocusing of the present. The one-on-one relationship between keeper and dweller distills our eroded privacy into something easier to understand. The omnipresent eye of data harvesting whittled down to the perverse (and almost retro) immediacy of voyeurism.
Samanta Schweblin, Trans. by Megan McDowell
PositiveFull StopA disquieting pull exists at the center of the stories, an inevitable plughole suck from which no-one can be extricated ... Because horror and beauty coexist in Mouthful of Birds, like the two sides of a coin sought by every sorry player in a mystifying version of the human experience .
